THE Legislature has taken a move to consolidate all concerns regarding the inequitable implementation for Guam of the provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), also known as Obamacare.

Resolution 316, authored by Sens. Dennis Rodriguez, Christopher Duenas and Vice Speaker Benjamin Cruz, urges the president of the United States, members of the U.S. House of Representatives, the U.S. Senate, members of the U.S. House of Representatives as well as the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for the equitable reconsideration of Obamacare’s applicability to Guam.

Rodriguez said the resolution expresses the Legislature’s concern relative to the PPACA’s implementation on Guam and compiles all the arguments that GovGuam has been sending to the federal government since the passage of PPACA.

“There are certain provisions that have kicked in and have been in place on island. There are a lot of challenges that we face. This sends our official expression of concerns to the U.S. government in terms of what needs to be done,” he said.

According to the resolution, although the Public Health Services Act, or PHSA, incorporated the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands into its definition of state, the provisions of the PPACA, which amends the PHSA, only covers the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Thus, the U.S. DHHS has determined that PPACA’s individual and business mandates are not applicable to Guam.